Refugee Sponsorship

 The United Church has a long history of private sponsorship and for our congregation this started with sponsoring refugees from Vietnam in the 1980's. In the 1990's and early 2000's we sponsored and settled families from Eritrea, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and most recently, Syria.

Yesterday's Pride service reminded me of the first sponsorship of a person claiming refugee status based on sexual orientation where we played a strong role in 'educating' the members of the tribunal hearing the case and moving it in a new direction.

The experience of sponsorship is a real chance to live out our faith, whether through fundraising, housing families in our manse, setting up apartments, finding jobs, doctors, dentists, schools, making strong friendships or, more recently, helping families already established here reunite with family members fleeing life-threatening situations.

Our last two sponsorships have required less hands-on help as the families here were able to raise the funds and do most of the resettling. These two families, from Syria via Turkey and Egypt, will be joining us on Sunday June 25th both to celebrate their arrival and to meet the congregation in person. As we say good bye to Julia I hope you have a chance to meet the Alwanis and the Asmars at coffee after the service. Donna Smith has promised to make name tags to make getting to know each other easier. I hope this will be the first of many chances to extend our hospitality.

Lyn May